


The Color of the Wheat Fields

by EskelChopChop



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Bittersweet, M/M, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher), temporary wish fulfillment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26380540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EskelChopChop/pseuds/EskelChopChop
Summary: Eskel found the djinn instead.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 47
Kudos: 133





	The Color of the Wheat Fields

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stillmadaboutpetra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillmadaboutpetra/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for stillmadaboutpetra, set as close to [their co-built universe](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882180) with fayet as I can get. They asked me to be nice to Eskel, so I tried. Happy birthday, brosky.
> 
> Plot from the Netflix show, characterization from the games.

Three years since they got the place, and Eskel still can’t get over the sight of Geralt’s hair in the sunlight. It’s bright, gleaming, clean. Most impossible, it’s red-- like an announcement, a victory banner. 

And this is a victory, even if it has an end point and no one knows it but him. 

Evenings like this one, when they’ve finished the afternoon milking and the last of the cows are tucked away in their paddock, even fucking Pilva, Eskel likes to look over at Geralt and daydream lists of things the color of his hair. Easy ones first: foxes, Leggia’s colt down the road, beggarticks, sunsets when the thunderclouds skid east and leave the western sky to smolder, the coals that’re left after they Igni up stupid-huge bonfires for the hell of it. The skins of apples. What’s an alghoul? Or a rotfiend? There’s nothing ghoulish in their lives. The red he knows is the wholesome glow of thriving things. Geralt’s hair is that shade of red, flushed and vital.

Geralt catches him staring. He flashes the cocky grin that’s followed Eskel through the decades. “What?” Unscarred face opening wide, no such thing as horizons. 

Eskel shakes his head. “Just sittin’.” A coy pause. “Admirin’ the view.”

Geralt can’t help but arch his neck. The bastard knows how that lifts the aching stretch of tendon and muscle to the very surface of his skin. “That all you’re planning to do?” 

Impatient as always. As if they hadn’t just spent three hours in the sun, baling hay. “Catch your breath, slow ass. Then-- maybe.”

Geralt snorts, an ugly sound but deliberately so. They’ve held onto some ugly pieces from Kaer Morhen, fractured bits of habit, the odd figure of speech that the townsfolk around here won’t recognize. They’re reminders of home. Not many other souvenirs they could bring. “Here I thought you needed the break. How many beats per minute you running right now? Should we count?”

“Go ahead. But not yours. Don’t think you can count that high.”

Geralt leans forward to drive his knuckles into Eskel’s shoulder, but he stretches so far he nearly upends the stump he’s sitting on. Eskel had said they ought to dig holes for the logs to rest in. Steadier foundation, he’d said, though he should’ve said: we both still remember how to make White Gull, you know how things get tilty at a certain time of night. Sure, Geralt had said, I’ll dig them, and the next day he’d thrown the thick stumps on the ground all haphazard anyway.

But that’s the way it’s always been here. Eskel found the abandoned cottage, convinced Geralt that they ought to talk to the aldorman, trade the labor of two young witcher-trained bodies in exchange for a roof they could patch up and call their own. Geralt had wanted to keep wandering, leave Kaer Morhen as far behind as possible, until they could make a diet of siren eggs and fish somewhere in Skellige. Eskel wanted to plant potatoes, barley, crops that ground the soil and blossom under patience like sun. Geralt wanted horses, kept Axiing the wild herds down from the hills and apologizing when the Sign wore off and the horses broke their amateurish fences. Geralt hunts; Eskel plants. Geralt wanders, restless; Eskel stands still. 

It could’ve broken them in half. Almost did, after that first leap of faith spilled them out of Kaer Morhen, down the mountain pass, and into Kaedwen with their swords, mutagens, and sudden terror that they had no fucking clue what to do next. Two half-trained witchers, yellow-eyed and mutated, but medallionless. They’d left everything behind and in those first wandering, terrified years, neither of them could believe it.

Time and again, Geralt would glare at him over another pitiful fire and say: _what the hell were you thinking._

Eskel would stand his ground. Slowly, patiently, the same explanation: I know what happens next. That second Trial. I know what it would have done to you.

The Geralt that Eskel remembers from the first round of his youth wouldn’t have believed him. Maybe it’s a magical influence too subtle for either of them to trace, even if they’d had medallions to check. 

This Geralt, though. He rages and he sulks, same as the other one, but he doesn’t storm off. Even in those early, uncertain days, sometimes the look over the campfire was gratitude. 

“Thinking of heading over to the Queenfisher tomorrow,” Geralt says now.

“‘nother fight night?”

Geralt nods in the affirmative. “Guy with the cow name’s coming back.”

“Ah, yeah. Liked him. He almost got you.”

“Almost got me and you like him? Thought you were rooting for me?”

“Eh.” Eskel waves a careless hand. “All the ladies’re on your side anyway.”

“True. It’s a lot of pressure,” Geralt sighs. Eskel gives a pointed snort. “Know who he reminds me of?”

Eskel grunts a question. He can’t tell if the mannerism is a holdover from Kaer Morhen and the exhausted, wordless sounds that were all the trainees could manage at the end of the day, or if they’re starting to talk like the farmers around here-- unhurried, following the sun’s pace. 

“Dervo,” Geralt says.

Eskel huffs. “Ah, yeah. That son of a bitch.”

“You just say that because he trounced you.”

“Wouldn’t let me use Signs. One Aard, and he’d’ve been flyin’ with the forktails.”

“You sound awfully sure of yourself. Sure you wouldn’t be the one admiring the view from up above?”

“Fuck yeah. Could’ve broken his Quen with a piece of stale bread.”

Geralt leans an elbow on one knee. “Alright, bar brawler. Then how about you enter this time?”

“Ehh. Nah.”

“Why not? Come on, it’ll be fun. Just like old times, except we don’t have to do push-ups when we lose.”

Eskel raises his eyebrows. “Think I’m done with old times.” 

Geralt shakes his head but the corner of his mouth lifts. “Eskel, you talk like an old man.”

Because he is. Or at least, Eskel remembers fifty years that have no longer happened. Instead of noting this, he shrugs. “It’ll come down to you and me anyway. That’s no fun. If I wanna punch you in the face, I could just do it here.”

Geralt’s eyes glint. “Dare you to try.”

Eskel meets the yellow of those irises, already sparked with lightning. Geralt crackles. He’s always chafed at stillness and the peace of the fields in evening must itch at him.

They stand up simultaneously. Geralt’s practically grinning. The sun’s haloing in his hair. Now it’s gold-red, like copper, like--

“Ow! Fuckin--” Eskel lifts his leg and hops away from the sudden sting of pain against his left ass cheek. Beestings! Why? How? He should’ve heard something...

It wasn’t a bee. Now he can smell the faint whiff of a fire that materialized out of nowhere.

Geralt has that cocky fucking grin again. 

“Igni, Geralt? These are new.”

“That’s revenge.”

“You shit-eating--”

Eskel surges forward but Geralt’s already running, shouting a laugh into the breeze. He tears off toward the pastures and Eskel’s sprinting after him in a dance they know well, they’ve done it since childhood-- Geralt a blur of motion meteoring ahead, Eskel chasing his wake. Maybe this is why Eskel will heave decades aside for him-- to see how he runs when he’s finally free. 

The sun gilds Geralt’s head. It’s red-gold like a shooting star, a streak of light that no one can contain.

...unless Geralt wants someone to contain him.

Eskel cheats. Can’t help it, Geralt makes it too easy and it’s too fun to see the sign of Yrden flare at his feet and suddenly reduce him to swimming through time that’s slowed, air that’s become like water. Eskel throws himself at the wiry body and they tumble across the field together, a collision of elbows and chests and dirt. 

“No fair,” Geralt gasps. He’s on his back but with an animal quickness he’s curling himself to stand up. 

With one hand on his chest, Eskel shoves him back down. “Love and war, right?”

Geralt holds onto Eskel’s biceps instead of trying to shove him off. “Which one’s this?”

Eskel throws his leg over the long, lean torso, hugs the heat of Geralt between his knees. “Depends. How good you gonna be for me?” 

Geralt arches his back, digs his heels in the dirt to raise his hips off the ground and up between Eskel’s legs. 

“Whoa-ho.” Eskel grins. There are no scars to stretch his face. “Want somethin’?”

“Hmm.” Geralt’s hands move to Eskel’s shoulders. “I did have something in mind, actually.”

Geralt. Geralt and his ideas. Geralt who can’t ever stand still and spirals out in wild wheeling orbits, but always circles back to him. 

“You and your ideas.” Eskel lowers his hips a few inches, the edge of him grazing the edge of Geralt. “This one more like the cave? Or more like the piss bomb?”

Both memories have them grinning. “Better than both,” Geralt says. 

Geralt lifts his head and even in his witcher eyes, Eskel can see the boy he’d run alongside, get punished alongside. His hair’s red like the ribbons the girls wear in their hair at Beltane, like Hasiana’s wheatfields tempered to forge-hot gold. 

Eskel dips his head and their foreheads touch. This close up, Geralt’s eyes blur into a swim of color—night sky black, firefly yellow. “Let’s hear it.”

Geralt lowers his voice to a thrumming bass that makes Eskel tighten, that much harder all over. “Spent all day watching you work that field. That fucking body, Eskel. Wanna see it underneath me, laid out. Wanna ride you at my pace, make you lie there with your arms at your sides and you can’t touch me unless I say. What do you think of that?”

Eskel thinks he’s devoted. He thinks he’s built this place so there will be something large enough, constant enough to envelop all of Geralt’s movement. His restless body and stream of ideas. Eskel will be big enough to contain it all. “Think we’ll see how long you last.”

They grin into each other’s mouths in a kiss that’s jagged with teeth, rough as the crags that carve Kaer Morhen, and then soft like this sun-warmed earth that crumbles dark and fecund beneath them.

Geralt’s orbit winds Eskel up on his feet, tracks him across their pastures and dirt yard and into the rough walls of their cottage, to the bed they’ve built with their own hands. It’s made of wood from a linden tree, fallen in a freak lightning storm. The tree of lovers, Trione had said, before trying to get them to take some red cedar, too. Geralt had taken a few planks for a chest he’d never finished. 

They fall into bed. Only a few strips of fabric need to litter the floor before they’re bare to each other, heat and unscarred skin, muscles hardened in the fields and not by swordplay. 

Geralt climbs on top of him. He grabs Eskel’s wrists, pins them down on either side of the pillow. On other nights they’d wrestle, but tonight this is not a contest.

“Stay there,” Geralt says.

Eskel smiles. He’ll stay. Geralt knows how to touch him. Palms heavy against his chest, carrying his weight, both of them made solid. Teasing his ass above Eskel’s straining upward reach. Luxurious lather of tongue and lips. There is no rush. This space is theirs and no one else’s. These bodies, too.

The rain ought to make love to the earth like this. A touch that persists, wears rough edges smooth. Eskel wants grooves worn into him. Let Geralt mark where the monsters haven’t been. Witchers don’t get this. Whatever they are now, though, they aren’t witchers. They’ve made themselves into these other bodies, and even time has become their own. For this while.

They have to work through that first reluctant unclosing. No rush here, either. Geralt shifts his hips impatiently and Eskel grips his thighs.

“No touching,” Geralt reminds him.

Eskel lets his arms fall back to frame his head. “Just seems you could use some help.”

“I got it.” He winces. 

Eskel grips the sides of the pillow to hold the rest of himself still. “Use more oil,” he grunts. 

“I said I got it.”

Geralt always makes it a struggle. Never wants to take the patient route. 

But they struggle through that first prying open and Eskel doesn’t have to muscle inside Geralt anymore. He’s worn a groove inside and furrows into the path he’s built.

Whenever they move together— with swords, with bare knuckles, with oil— their patterns match. It’s been the same beat for decades. 

“Eskel.” Geralt groans his name from his belly.

“Come on.” Eskel lifts his hips the tiniest amount.

Geralt folds forward. Both elbows ground into Eskel’s chest and they nearly slide off each other, the sheen of sweat polishing them. “No,” Geralt growls, “Eskel, I want— I need—“

“What,” Eskel groans.

Geralt’s hair is a tumble of uncolored shadow except for the hint of light at its edge, turning it silver. But it isn’t. Geralt’s looking at Eskel, at him, for him. Geralt is looking back.

Eskel feels the ghost of cracks inside him, from places that aren’t broken anymore. The two of them are still carved by Kaer Morhen. He can hear it in their synchronized pulse and the words that neither of them knows how to say. No one taught them how. Witchers don’t need to— can’t— but the men they are, they have no weight of medallions on their chests, no silver chaining their necks. They have voices but no words. 

Eskel’s spent so long wanting them, he’s forgotten how they go. Could he hear them, if Geralt said them?

“Here,” Eskel says. It’s a strangled plea from the crack that’s never healed even if, here, it never opened. He means— you, me, this place we built, we’re here. He doesn’t know any other words.

Geralt lowers his head into Eskel’s chest, reaches for Eskel’s arms so they’re laced around his own shoulders. Eskel holds tight.

“Here,” Eskel says, clearer now, thrusting up into Geralt and a shuddering center that he can reach. He holds himself against that preciousness until Geralt surrenders to it. Eskel isn’t far behind. One day they’ll figure out how to match that part of the pattern. 

In the damp aftermath, Geralt leans his head just far enough to touch his ear to Eskel’s shoulder. “Fuck,” he says.

Eskel turns his head, presses his mouth against the delicate skin of Geralt’s temple. “Just did.”

“Mm.”

They stare vaguely at the ceiling, letting their sweat dry.

“You ever think about the Path?” Geralt asks.

Eskel rolls his head back and forth on the pillow. “Nope.”

“Have a hard time believing that.”

“Really?”

Geralt tilts his head, an awkward angle that strains the skin of his neck. “It’s what we trained for. It’s everything people talked about.”

“Mm hm. ‘Member what those people said?”

“Ehhh.” Geralt drives one finger into the meat of Eskel’s thigh. 

“You want a silver sword, I’ll paint one for you.”

“Shut up.”

“Slash you with a pitchfork a couple times if you wanna look the part.”

“You ass.”

Eskel flops his arm around the curve of Geralt’s head and kisses him on the temple.

“Still,” Geralt says.

“Still,” Eskel agrees, continuing silently: still, you’re the same Geralt. You never learned what the Path really is, so you’re still dreaming of knighthood. A white horse, a golden shield. 

Still, Eskel hasn’t told him what he knows. He’s lived fifty years that now never passed, remembers what might never happen here: Caingorn, Deirdre, Sabrina. Calanthe, Cirilla. A Geralt on the other side of human, hollowed out. 

It had been a bad year, in that other time when Eskel wore a medallion and carried a silver sword. Constant rain, shit contracts. Eskel hadn’t eaten properly in weeks, couldn’t afford a tavern. So he pitched his tent near a promising river and went fishing. After an hour, he’d caught a skinny little trout not worth the trouble to gut it and a lamp plugged with a strange seal. 

His first thought was to throw it back. Djinn never meant good luck in the stories and in a year like that, he didn’t have luck to push. But then he got to thinking about who else would find it, what they might want and what they’d wish to get it. Eskel’s never been one of those people, in any timeline. He’s learned better than to want.

Except for one thing. 

He cooked the skinny trout anyway and thought about it all night, tracing every consequence. Eskel has never moved the world. The world upended him and then forgot about him. He’s moved in the spaces between larger forces, unnoticed. 

What if he could move the world and no one knew? What if he could see what it was like, to have that one thing-- and then put it back? 

So Eskel held the lamp between his knees, opened himself to the thought that he used to keep tucked so deep inside him he could forget about it for months at a time, until ghosts jolted him into remembering. The thought always started with “If I could…” but this time it started with “I wish.”

He’d blacked out, found himself in Kaer Morhen. But he still didn’t believe it, not until someone came running toward him with fox-red hair. 

The djinn isn’t pleased. It used to haunt them every night, raging in the branches for release. Eskel says it’s the ghost of a prophet, the same prophet from another lie about how Eskel knew the results of the second Trials. Eskel’s never had so many lies to keep track of. The feeling’s embarrassment, more than anything. So elaborate a lie in order to get something so simple. But he dreamt of building this place for so long, he finds he can build a few lies into the foundation without it wobbling. 

Besides, it’s not built to last. Eskel’s already heard it here, two herbalists gossiping idly to each other at a seasonal fair-- a rumor of Elder Blood. Geralt never did enough studying, didn’t know what it meant in that other time when he’d come back for the winter and told them about a Child of Surprise. Eskel did and does. 

The world he’s moved won’t miss them, for now. But in a few decades, after Nilfgaard rises and Cintra falls, it’ll need a White Wolf.

And-- and-- 

\--and it’s taken fifty vanished years and three more to hear himself think: Eskel loves Geralt. He can love him here, enough to remember an ashen-haired girl who will become something to Geralt that Eskel can never be. 

This home they’ve built, it’s a fragile house on borrowed land. Eskel knows it and doesn’t regret it. He remembers those promises they’d made to each other. He wanted to know what a promise is like when it comes true.

It tastes like the wine they share at night. Feels like the ripple of muscle hardened by field labor, not by swords. And it looks red-- red like a blush, like fire, like the sun setting on a house they built.

He keeps the lamp with the books he couldn’t leave behind. Time’ll come someday to surrender the time he’s borrowed, give the White Wolf back to the world and let him have his Path and his Child of Surprise. The way it’s supposed to be. Destiny moves Geralt, catapults him forward into maelstroms and machinations. He can feel it lapping at his feet. Eskel will be the one standing still.

But for now-- 

Eskel rolls onto his side, wraps an arm around Geralt’s chest, this body freed of the weight of destiny.

For now, they have these years. Decades, almost a mortal span. Later, another wish will undo it all because it has to. Only Eskel will remember this: the house they built, the crops they raised.

It will have been worth it. Now he knows what a fulfilled promise is like: the taste of new milk, the crumble of the same soil under their hands for years, Geralt’s hair red as life.

“Mrmgh.” Eskel grimaces, rolls onto his back again.

“What.”

“Your breath reeks.”

“It’s your cock.” 

“It’s your mouth.”

“Seemed to like it okay back there.” 

Like it? Eskel hears himself say-- a voice that feels new, wanting to come out of this younger body he’s returned to. More than like, I--

Maybe he’ll learn the next words. Maybe, someday.

For now, Eskel holds Geralt to him, the beloved body alive and unruined and, for all these impossible years, his.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [that bit with the fox](http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/framechapter21.html) in _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: "'It has done me good,' said the fox, 'because of the color of the wheat fields.'"
> 
> ETA: If you're a fan of song accompaniments, try Eva Cassidy's ["Fields of Gold."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UVjjcOUJLE)


End file.
